Pages

Saturday, June 25, 2011

Aurora, Montegrappa, Omas, and Online Inks

As many of you know, we just started carrying Aurora, Montegrappa, Omas, and Online inks. I am spending my weekend doing swabs of the ink colors and loading them into our Swab Shop, and I thought I might just shoot a video for you with my general impression of the ink colors, having them fresh to my eyes for the first time. Enjoy!

I've never used any of these brands before, but I must say I really like the Omas bottle. It's very 1930s Art Deco. I quite like Omas Blue, Sepia and Violet, too. I agree that the red is quite washed out and not really red at all.

I also really like Montegrappa's Bordeux. Looks, on my screen, like a nice warm colour without being too bright or overpowering.

So, now you have the inks, will you be getting the pens? I noticed you already have the Online pens. :)

It depends! We usually have minimum quantities we have to meet, which vary. And we try to estimate the popularity based on reviews and feedback on blogs and forums like FPN, but it's hard to anticipate. I guess it's an art form ;)

We'll get into the pens.... eventually. They are quite expensive, and since we have limited experience with them, we're relying on our customers (you all!) to let us know what you think we should carry. We can always special order anything in the meantime from any of these brands.

I got Omas Grey and Turquoise for Christmas, I really like the Turquoise, as Brian said, it is close to Lamy, but never got around to Grey, I have to change that!If Omas still had the old 360, I would be tempted to special order this, but the new 360 with the round grip section is only a shadow of its former glory.

The Aurora black is a dark black, that is really well behaved.

The online bottles look so small, as if my bigger pens wouldn't be able to draw ink from them at all.

I think the size comparison with Iroshizuku is not really fair, I mean the Irosjizuku bottles have a thick bottom and are huge compared to any bottle with 50ml (and quite beautiful, too).

Thanks for sharing your experience here, Sven! I agree, the Pilot ink probably wasn't the best bottle to use for comparison, but it really seemed funny to me how much of a different there was, especially with that little Online bottle! That thing is really tiny, I don't think hardly any pen will fit in there. Decanting or filling with a syringe will almost be a requirement with that bottle.

I'm glad you liked the walk through, I thought it would be something neat to do :)

Today I got my first bottle of Yard o'Led, it contains 28.4 ml of ink (yes, they wrote the decimal on the label) and it is tiny, when I now half that for the online ink... speechless(JHerbin usually has 30ml, too, but the bottle appears bigger than the Yard o'Led one)BTW I also got my first Sailor Jentle ink today (Doyou). I was suprised how much I like the ink, but the inlay in the bottle is too small even for a small(-ish) nib, the TWSBI 530 nib. That was a bit disappointing, as I like big nibs.

I have a bottle of OMAS blue which came with an OMAS pen I bought recently. With an OMAS EF nib the colour is beautiful when used on standard bond/printer paper. On less absorbent Rhodia paper the ink appeared dull and unsaturated, though I suspect this ink would look better on Rhodia paper if used with a broader nib. Finally, I find this ink has a drier flow than my other inks (Diamine, Waterman, Noodler's and Private Reserve).

The OMAS Sepia and Turquiose look nice. The OMAS bottle is one my favourite ink bottles. Like others, I love the art deco look, and the facets allow it to be set at an angle to more easily fill pens when the bottle runs low on ink.

I love the old style OMAS 360's, and have been collecting them as I can afford them. The new 360 doesn't appeal to me at all, it strikes me as an attempt to appeal to everyone which ends up appealing to noone.

I've been using Omas Blue in my Sailor 1911 music nib, and it doesn't seem too dry to me, of course it's the first ink I've used in that pen so I don't have the best basis of comparison! I love the color on Rhodia and Clairefontaine in that pen, it's incredibly dark with a good amount of color variation/shading. The Omas bottles are great, very unique and beautiful. My one complaint about them is that nowhere on the bottle does it say what color it is! So you have to be sure to keep tabs on that.

I quickly tested my OMAS blue with a boad medium nib, and it definetly performed better with the wider and wetter nib. The result was a pleasant medium blue with some nice variation. I took a look at my notes written with this ink, and after sitting in the pen for a few days, the volume of ink was substantially reduced, and I got the same beautiful dark blue in your swab.